Cork author Louise Hegarty on her first novel: ‘I’ve been training for this for 25 years’

Every so often, a debut novel stands out from the pack. This year, that book is ‘Fair Play’, says Aoife Barry. Cork author Louise Hegarty talks growing up in Glanmire, learning her craft from Agatha Christie, and the joy of being a debut novelist in her 30s

Louise Hegarty in Henchy's Bar, St. Lukes. Picture: David Creedon

Living in Ireland, we get used to great books being produced by debut authors. But every now and then a debut comes along that stands out from the pack. This year that book is Fair Play, the first novel by Cork author Louise Hegarty.

Anyone who’s been following Hegarty’s writing in the various journals she’s been published in over the last few years, such as Banshee and the Stinging Fly, will know that there’s something singular about her work. Her prose is never showy, her ideas can be a little quirky, and she loves to play around with form. We get all of this in Fair Play, which takes inspiration from Golden Age murder mysteries — think ‘queen of crime’ Agatha Christie — but spins out a modern tale of grief amidst the search for answers after a sudden death.

Here’s Hegarty on the book’s plot, which centres on a brother and sister named Abigail and Benjamin: “A group of friends are in an Airbnb, New Year’s Eve 2022. They’re eating and drinking and playing a murder mystery game devised by Abigail. Next morning, everyone wakes up except for Benjamin, and then Abigail finds herself in a murder mystery of her own while she’s trying to unravel the details of her brother’s death.”

Not only does the book take inspiration from Golden Age murder mysteries, it also plays around with the tropes of this genre. It moves from a contemporary setting to a classic murder mystery after Benjamin’s death, when a detective called Auguste Bell arrives on the scene. The narrative then moves between the two styles for the remainder of the book. There are even several pages that outline the rules of solving mysteries, breaking the fourth wall a little. It takes skill to make this all work, and the effect for the reader is thrilling.

Growing up in Glanmire with her parents and younger sister, Hegarty, aged 35, was always a big reader. Her parents were also crime fiction fans, and this led to her loving Christie books and crime novels in general. Yet she never guessed she’d end up writing a novel inspired by this herself.

Louise Hegarty visiting the Mercier Press bookshop in St. Lukes. Picture: David Creedon

“I’ve been telling people that I’ve been training for this for 25 years,” says Hegarty over lunch in Dublin’s Westbury Hotel (pear and brie salad for her).

“It is a funny thing, how the things that you’re reading or watching when you’re young, they do come up later on.”

Benjamin’s death is a tragedy, and his sister Abigail seeks solid answers. Without spoiling things, it’s perhaps enough to say that the ending of Hegarty’s book isn’t exactly what we’ve come to expect in classic murder mysteries.

After planning out the story, Hegarty wrote it in three months on evenings and weekends, while working an admin job. Now that she has the book deal — and a second book, a collection of short stories, due out next year — she is able to write full time.

The writing process was “a lot of fun”, says Hegarty, who was inspired by the likes of the film The Last of Sheila, which is a schlocky 1973 murder mystery written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, and the 1970s TV series The Singing Detective. She was also inspired by an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Buffy’s mother dies.

“That’s a great episode [showing] how you deal with genuine emotion and a sudden death in a genre setting,” she says.

She wanted to subvert some of what goes on in murder mystery narratives. “In Agatha Christie books, people are dying everywhere and no one seems to be overly upset,” she points out. “Looking at the effect of sudden death, and grief, I think when someone dies suddenly, you are trying to frantically find clues and trying to find a very easy narrative of what happened.” 

But there’s not always going to be an easy narrative, she points out.

There is something comforting about a whodunnit, she says.

“It’s very familiar, it’s a very safe world. In the last couple of years, there’s been a huge increase in cosy crime and people looking towards those familiar narratives.”

She says that between the First and Second World War, there was a “fever” of interest in crossword puzzles and games like bridge, perhaps as a way of engaging the mind and ensuring “everything’s gonna be OK in the end — which, of course, then is not what real life is like”.

Louise Hegarty: "In the last couple of years, there’s been a huge increase in cosy crime." Picture: David Creedon

While Hegarty wasn’t directly inspired by a real-life experience to write this story, she was interested in how people approach grief. There’s a scene in the book where Abigail feels her friends don’t understand how upset she is.

“I think people deal with grief in different ways. And I think if you’re not maybe always crying, people think ‘Oh, you must be better’. Of course, she’s not. But it’s just the way people react, and it’s just different for everyone,” she says.

While at school in Coláiste na Phiarsaigh in Glanmire, Hegarty was big into reading and writing. She started to take her writing seriously in her late teens and early 20s, and began submitting to journals such as the Stinging Fly.

“I was just submitting stuff for ages before I was published,” she says. How has she changed since her early days?

“My writing is a lot better, and I figured out what it is that I’m interested in, and what I’m good at. And a lot of it is structure, working with form, genre.

“A lot of it is problem solving, I think. And I like trying to figure out: OK, my character is here and they need to get here, and how do I get them from A to B? So there’s that form of creative thinking. It’s more mathematical than anything else. I like pursuing certain ideas.”

Fair Play was the first novel-shaped idea she came up with, and she thinks part of the inspiration was the grief narratives that emerged in popular culture during the pandemic. When an agent got in touch after reading her short stories, she was able to send them her novel draft too. That was followed by signing with the agent and sending her book out on submission to publishers.

“Everything happened very quickly, after a lot of nothing happening,” says Hegarty. Though she had “absolutely no expectations” for her novel, several publishers wanted it before Picador won out. Her book is great, but she says she worried it might be a bit too niche or unusual. “I hope people enjoy it,” she says modestly.

Outside of books, she’s very into music (recent listens include the Viagra Boys and rapper Mike). “I’m big into music. I mean, I don’t have any skill. I play a bit of piano, but I have no real talent or anything. I’m very interested in films as well.”

She’s currently working on her second novel, and is settling into a routine as a full-time author.

“I go to the library, write for a few hours, have my lunch, and then in the afternoon I might go for a walk, I might read, I might do something else. You’re preparing for the next day’s work as well,” she says. “And I always found as well, when I’m stuck with something, you go for a walk, and then suddenly you find a solution for that.”

Does Cork serve as inspiration? “Definitely. There’s a lot of writers in Cork,” she says, describing Cork’s literary history as “quite diverse — I don’t know if I can necessarily think of a single voice, or style of writing even.”

She has several writer friends in the city. Would she ever move to somewhere else?

“No, I’ve always lived in Cork,” she says, noting that she lives near the city centre now. “I just really like the area. I wouldn’t be against the idea of living abroad for a little while, but I like having that base.”

There can be a rush in the publishing world to bring out your first book while very young. But being a debut novelist in her mid-30s suits Hegarty. She’s put years into improving her craft, and feels the benefit of this. Now that her debut is about to hit the bookshelves, she can rest knowing that a lot of hard work is about to pay off.

“I feel pretty confident with my writing now as well, which is a big thing,” she says gently. “In some ways, I think if I’d written something a number of years ago, maybe I wouldn’t have had the ability to make it what I wanted it to be, and I wouldn’t have had confidence about it.”

• ‘Fair Play’, published by Picador, is out now.